Imagery questionnaires have been misused in recent research conducted by Chara and Verplanck in 1986 and Chara and Hamm in 1988. The Chara and Verplanck study used unvalidated performance and questionnaire measures of unknown reliability. The Chara and Hamm study lacks even the minimal requirements of a controlled experiment by failing to control for order effects, experimenter effects, and demand characteristics. It is easy to observe nonsignificant effects or to bias results in particular directions by using poorly designed questionnaires and experiments, but nothing of significance can be concluded.
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